The horrific death of a teenager mauled by a lion in Brazil has prompted a Channel 7 personality with a unique childhood to reveal such tragic incidents have a dark history in Australia too.
A Childhood Surrounded by Wild Danger
Natasha Weber, known to viewers as AstroTash, spent more than two decades living at Melbourne Zoo with her parents. She told The Nightly that news of 19-year-old Gerson de Melo Machado's death at Arruda Camera Park in Brazil earlier this month deeply affected her.
"Look, my heart absolutely broke," Weber said. "My heart did really break for the young man, he was obviously suffering and deluded, and my heart broke for his family."
Her connection to the story, however, goes beyond empathy. Weber has witnessed the brutal reality of such attacks firsthand from her time at the zoo.
Disturbing Incidents from a Bygone Era
The astrologer recounted a fatal mauling that occurred at Melbourne Zoo in the late 1970s. An enclosure design featuring a walkway overhead allowed a desperate individual to climb and drop in.
"That did happen while I was living there — and the next day, when the keepers were doing their rounds, they did find a carcass," she revealed. "It was so badly mauled that it didn’t even really look human."
In a separate 1989 incident, another man entered a lion enclosure with fatal intentions. "He had like a karate outfit on and he was going to, I guess, try martial arts with the lion — it didn’t end well," Weber stated.
These events happened during a period when lion parks like Bacchus Marsh Lion Safari and Bullen African Lion Safari operated across Victoria with relatively lax safety measures, encouraging close public interaction with the predators.
Mental Health and Modern-Day Risks
While acknowledging past safety shortcomings, Weber emphasised that mental health issues were always behind that type of behaviour. She noted that determined individuals will often find a way past protocols.
Although fatal maulings in Australia have decreased since the 1970s, serious attacks continue to occur:
- In July this year, a woman in her 50s lost her arm in an attack at Queensland's Darling Downs Zoo.
- In 2020, NSW zookeeper Jennifer Brown, 35, was left in critical condition after being mauled by two lions at Shoalhaven Zoo.
- A 15-year-old Australian student was also mauled during a safari trip to South Africa in 2015.
The recent viral video from Brazil has cast a renewed spotlight on the ever-present dangers of wild animals and the complex human behaviours that lead to such tragedies. Melbourne Zoo declined to comment on the historical incidents mentioned.
